Billionaire's Scandalous Twins

Chapter 12

“Don’t you think what I say is going to matter at all? Why do you need to be such a pompous bastard always, Nick?” asked Isobel as she glared at him.

“Do you think that you are really in a position to tell me such a thing? After all that you have done? After all that you have said and kept on lying to me about? You are not the woman that I can ever trust in my life. I don’t even know that you are telling the truth and how am I supposed to know this that you are here not to break my engagement?” asked Nicholas with a cool gaze as Isobel seethed in rage.

“You are the one who ruined my career. You are the one who made it sure that I can never get a job in my line even though you never gave me a chance to explain myself. If you are going to call that your engagement to the blonde barracuda is something of substance then no one is a bigger fool than you,” said Isobel with a satisfied smile as she looked at his angry eyes.

“How dare you talk to me about my fiancé in that manner?” asked Nicholas and Isobel laughed at him coldly.

“You? You are telling me this after you made her look like that before me? I am the other one here Nicholas…she is the one you are engaged to, the one who should be staying in your cabin and not me and instead what are you doing? You made her look like a fool…she was right in thinking that there is something otherwise going along here. Why do you think that I thought you don’t want to do anything with them? You are getting married and my sons might be yours but I shall let them be called bastards,” said Isobel.

“If they are my sons then they will never be called bastards. No one will ever dare to speak of them in that way,” growled Nicholas.

“Oh is that so!! I see that the overestimation of your capabilities is still not gone…what do you think you can do huh? Just nothing Nick…you ruined my life the last time and I am not going to allow you to do the same thing this time to my sons,” said Isobel and her voice had a cold fury which scared even the great Nicholas Falconari. He thought that this was not the same woman whom he had been able to do away with without any warning the last time.

So he considered going through the way where he was definite that she would be hurt.

“You are just jealous of Barbara because she has something you can never have. That is me,” said Nicholas as he growled and Isobel gave out a short bark of laughter.

“You are truly delusional Nicholas to think that I would ever want you. The only reason that I am here on this trip is because I felt that you deserved to know that you have children. I am never going to ask you for anything. They are solely my kids and mine only and I shall make sure that they never even get close to you or your new family. Because I can tolerate a lot of things but I shall never allow my babies to be called bastards. And if I had known that you were getting engaged then I would have never come on this cruise ever,” said Isobel as she threw the napkin on the table and then walked away.

Nicholas thought to himself with grim realization that this woman had the same effect on him as she did the last time. He did not see her for the rest of the evening on the deck and so Nicholas assumed that she had returned back to the cabin. He thought that if he should go there and apologise to her for what he had said but then he felt that it was better to keep the distance between them until he knew the truth.

Once the ship had docked and most of the passengers had disembarked for their day of shopping, sailing and exploring the city of Cabo San Lucas, Nick got busy. He’d already had Rhonda make a few calls, and the lab at the local hospital was expecting them.

The sun was hot and bright and the scent of the sea greeted them the moment he and Isobel stepped out on deck. Ordinarily Nick would have been enjoying this. He loved this part of cruising. Docking in a port, exploring the city, revisiting favorite sites, discovering new ones.

But today was different. Today he was on a mission, so he wasn’t going to notice the relaxed, party atmo­sphere of Cabo. Just as he wasn’t going to notice the way Isobel’s pale green sundress clung to her body or

the way her legs looked in those high-heeled sandals. He had no interest in the fact that her dark blond hair looked like spilled honey as it flowed down over her shoulders and he really wasn’t noticing her scent or the way it seemed to waft its way to him on the slightest breeze.

Having her stay in his suite had seemed like a good idea yesterday. But the knowledge that she was so close, that she was just down the hall from him, alone in her bed, had taunted him all night long. Now his eyes felt gritty, his temper was too close to the surface and his body was hard and achy.

Way to go, Falconari, he told himself.

“So where are we going?” she asked as he laid his hand at the small of her back to guide her down the gangplank to shore. Damn, just the tips of his fingers against her spine was enough to make him want to forget all about this appointment and drag her back to his cabin instead.

Gritting his teeth, he pushed that image out of his mind.

“Rhonda called the hospital here,” he muttered. “The lab’s expecting us. They’ll take a DNA sample, run it and fax the results to your lab. We should have an an­swer in a day or two.”

She actually stumbled and he grabbed her arm in an instinctive move. “That fast?”

“Money talks,” he said with a shrug. He’d learned long ago that with enough money, a man could accom­plish anything. Way of the world. And for the first time, he was damned glad he was rich enough to demand fast action. Nick wanted this question of paternity settled.

Like now. He couldn’t stop thinking about those babies. Couldn’t seem to stop looking at the picture she’d given him of them.

Couldn’t stop wondering how their very existence was going to affect—change—his life. So he needed to know if he was going to be a father or if he was simply going to be suing Isobel Baker for everything she had for lying to him. Again.

Her heels clicked against the gangway and sounded like a frantic heartbeat. He wondered if she was nervous. Wondered if she really was lying and was now worried about being found out. Had she thought he’d simply accept her word that her sons belonged to him? Surely not.

At the bottom of the gangway, a taxi was waiting. Silently blessing Rhonda’s efficiency, Nick opened the door for Isobel, and when she was inside, slid in after her. In short, sharp sentences spoken in nearly fluent Spanish, Nick told the driver where to go.

“I didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” she said as he settled onto the bench seat beside her.

“There’s a lot about me you don’t know,” he said.

“I guess so.”

Of course, the same could be said about what he knew of her. He remembered clearly their time together more than a year before. But in those stolen moments, he’d been more intent on burying himself inside her than discovering her thoughts, her hopes, her dreams. He’d told himself then that there would be plenty of time for them to discover each other. He couldn’t have

guessed that in one short week he’d find her, want her and then lose her.

Yet, even with the passion simmering between them, Nick could recall brief conversations when she’d talked about her home, her family. He’d thought at the time that she was different from the other women he knew. That she was more sincere. That she was more interested in him, the man, than she was in what he was. How much he had.

Of course, that little fantasy had been exploded pretty quickly.

He dropped into silence again as the cab took off. He didn’t want to talk to her. Didn’t want to think about anything but what he was about to do. With a simple check of his DNA, his life could be altered irrevocably forever. His chest was tight and his mind was racing. Cabo was no more than a colorful blur outside his win­dow as they headed for the lab and a date with destiny.

In a few seconds the cab was swallowed by the bustling port city. At the dock and on the main drive that ran along the ocean, Cabo San Lucas was beautiful. The hotels, the restaurants and bars, everything was new and shone to perfection, the better to tempt the tourists who streamed into the city every year.

But just a few short blocks from the port and Cabo was a big city like any other. The streets were crowded with cars, and pedestrians leaped off the sidewalks and ran across the street with complete abandon, trusting that the drivers would somehow keep from running them down. Narrower, cobblestoned side streets spilled

off the bigger avenues and from there came the tantal­izing scents of frying onions, spices and grilling meat.

Restaurants and bars crowded together, their chipped stucco facades looking a little tattered as tourists milled up and down the sidewalks, cameras clutched in sun­burned fists. As the cab driver steered his car through the maze of traffic, Nick idly glanced out the window and noted the open-air markets gathered together under dark green awnings. Under that umbrella were at least thirty booths where you could buy everything from turquoise jewelry to painted ceramic burros.

Cabo was a tourist town and the locals did everything they could to keep those vacation dollars in the city.

“Strange, isn’t it?” she mused, and Nick turned his head to look at her. She was staring out her window at the city and he half wondered if she was speaking to him or to herself. “All of the opulence on the beach and just a few blocks away…”

“It’s a city, like any other,” he said.

She turned her head to meet his gaze. “It’s just a little disappointing to see the real world beneath the glitz.”

“There’s always a hidden side. To everything. And everyone,” he said, staring into her eyes, wondering what she was feeling. Wondering why he even cared.

“What’s hidden beneath your facade, then?” she asked.

Nick forced a smile. “I’m the exception to the rule,” he told her. “What you see is what you get with me. There are no hidden depths. No mysteries to be solved. No secrets. No lies.”

Her features tightened slightly. “I don’t believe that,” she said. “You’re not as shallow as you pretend to be, Nick. I remember too much to buy into that.”